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Ignoring seasonal changes in the ecological niche of non-migratory species may lead to biases in potential distribution models: lessons from bats

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Abstract

Phenology is a key feature in the description of species niches to capture seasonality in resource use and climate requirements. Species distribution models (SDMs) are widespread tools to evaluate a species’ potential distribution and identify its large-scale habitat preferences. Despite its chief importance, data phenology is often neglected in SDM development. Non-migratory bats of temperate regions are good model species to test the effect of data seasonality on SDM outputs because of their different roosting preferences between hibernation and reproduction. We hypothesized that (1) the output of SDMs developed for six non-migratory European bat species will differ between hibernation and reproduction; (2) models built from datasets encompassing both ecological stages will perform better than seasonal models. We employed a dataset of 470 independent occurrences of bat hibernacula and 400 independent records of nursery roosts of selected species and for each species we developed separate winter, summer and mixed (i.e. generated from both winter and summer occurrences) models. Seasonal and mixed potential ranges differed from each other and the direction of this difference was species-specific. Mixed models outperformed seasonal models in representing species niches. Our work highlights the importance of considering data seasonality in the development of SDMs for bats as well as many other organisms, including non-migratory species, otherwise the analysis will lead to significant biases whose consequences for conservation planning and landscape management may be detrimental.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Eurobats Advisory Committee for providing bat occurrence records for many of the countries within the Agreement range. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments made on a previous ms version.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wildlife Research Unit, Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Via Università n. 100, Portici, 80055, Naples, Italy

    Sonia Smeraldo, Luciano Bosso & Danilo Russo

  2. EnvixLab, Dipartimento Bioscienze e Territorio, Università del Molise, Pesche, Italy

    Mirko Di Febbraro

  3. Bat Research Group, Granollers Museum of Natural Sciences, Palaudàries, 102. Jardins Antoni Jonch Cuspinera, 08402, Granollers, Catalonia, Spain

    Carles Flaquer & Xavier Puig-Montserrat

  4. Forest Sciences Centre of Catalonia, Ctra. de Sant Llorenç de Morunys, km 2, Solsona, 25280, Lleida, Spain

    David Guixé

  5. Laboratorio de Ecología del Paisaje Forestal, Departamento de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad de La Frontera, P.O. Box 54-D, Temuco, Chile

    Fulgencio Lisón

  6. Institute of Zoology II, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Angelika Meschede

  7. Estacion Biológica de Doñana (CSIC), Avda. Americo Vespucio s/n, 41092, Seville, Spain

    Javier Juste

  8. Interessengemeinschaft für Fledermausschutz und -forschung in Thüringen e.V, Schweina, Germany

    Julia Prüger

  9. Galanthus Association, Carretera de Juià 46, Celrà, 17460, Catalonia, Spain

    Xavier Puig-Montserrat

  10. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, 24 Tyndall Avenue, BS8 1TQ, Bristol, UK

    Danilo Russo

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  1. Sonia Smeraldo
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  2. Mirko Di Febbraro
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Danilo Russo.

Additional information

Communicated by David Hawksworth.

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Smeraldo, S., Di Febbraro, M., Bosso, L. et al. Ignoring seasonal changes in the ecological niche of non-migratory species may lead to biases in potential distribution models: lessons from bats. Biodivers Conserv 27, 2425–2441 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1545-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-018-1545-7

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